With Halloween quickly approaching, it’s time to reevaluate
whether or not there’s magic in the air. Some people may wait by their
mailboxes for a Hogwarts acceptance letter. Others may go on haunted tours and
wait to see the supernatural. Even fewer may order some fruit online. Not just
any fruit, though, magic fruit.
It's a Miracle!
The fruit in question is Synsepalum
dulcificum, a berry more commonly known as the miracle fruit. While this
berry will not enable you to fly, it still has a little bit of a special kick.
If you eat this berry, then everything and anything sour will taste just like
candy for a limited period of time. Lemons taste like ice cream, Tabasco sauce
like a sweet glaze, and (for those with a refined palate) oysters like
bubblegum. This berry has gotten so popular in some cities that people have started
throwing “flavor-tripping parties” to try out its magical effects.
Sour = Sweet?
The miracle fruit, sadly, does not work because of magic.
Instead, it converts that lip-puckering sour taste into a sweet flavor with the
help of a protein known as miraculin. The miracle fruit has an
abundant supply of miraculin, which binds to special receptors in taste buds on
the human tongue. These receptors normally distinguish different tastes, such
as sweet and sour. When miraculin is present, though, the “sweet” receptors begin
to recognize sour signals as sweet. This makes the tongue think food like
lemons are actually dessert, triggering those sweet taste signals. Not everything tastes like cake, though, since miraculin only works when it is in an acidic (or sour) environment.
Holiday Bargains
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| Image Source: Flickr. dadadreams |
The main question after hearing about the miracle fruit is simple: where to buy it? The average cost is around $2 for a single berry, which will provide an hour of expectation-defying taste. Of course, that's only for the fresh fruit. Synsepalum dulcificum also comes in tablet form. A pack of these pills can cost up to $15, but at least they have a much longer expiration date than the real fruit. There are dozens of online providers for both forms of the berry, so it's pretty feasible to obtain.
I've been waiting for that letter from an owl for 9 years, so I might just get a berry to experience the magic of science in the meantime.
This is a very interesting post regarding the effect that this fruit has in changing the tastes of certain foods! It does seem like magic that such a fruit can really turn the flavor of something like Tabasco sauce into a sweet glaze. It is also interesting that a sugar such as miraculin is only grown in one fruit which is native to West Africa, as seen in this website (http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/what-could-miraculin-used-for). It is interesting to see what certain food processing companies can do with a protein such as miraculin if they were to mass produce it and incorporate this protein into everyday food distributed in local markets.
ReplyDeleteI will be honest though that at first site of this blog post I thought of something different when I saw ‘magic fruit’. I was thinking of a berry named wolfberry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfberry), which is native to the Himalaya region in South Asia. According to legend, this fruit has the capability to grant people life well over 100 years old if the individual maintains a healthy lifestyle while consuming these berries on the regular basis. My family used to be very involved in the marketing and distribution of the wolfberry for its positive health benefits.